Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Welcome to my very first food posting! I have been taking pictures of my cooking for over a year now...even before I started a blog! But for some reason I haven't made a food posting. Maybe I have been intimidated by all the other great food blogs out there and the food postings by my friends. Or maybe I have just been a little too focused on the newest member of my family. :-)

I absolutely love to cook. It is definitely the activity that takes up the most time in my life when you factor in the planning, the shopping, the cooking, and don't forget about the cleaning! It is such a gratifying feeling to be able to create something that I love, but more importantly that someone else loves too. Luckily for me, I have a husband that loves to eat and values food so much that he will wrap up and save the 2 remaining bites of a meal for a "snack" to eat later. If he didn't enjoy my cooking so much, I know I wouldn't be nearly as motivated to put as much time and effort into what I make.

I love reading about food almost as much as I love cooking it. My favorite magazines are those that focus mostly on food (Southern Living is probably my favorite), and I love to read food blogs. I enjoy perusing cookbooks too, but I don't use them nearly as much as I should for the number that I have. (I have a bookcase purely devoted to cookbooks, and it doesn't even contain them all.) For some reason, I have a really difficult time cooking something from a recipe when I don't know what "real" people have to say about it. If I find a recipe in a cookbook that I want to use, I will first get on the computer and find a similar recipe on Food Network or Allrecipes just to read the comments. I want to know that the time and effort (and money!) I am about to expend on this recipe is going to be worth my while! I have just recently stumbled upon a food blog search site (found here), which I have used frequently in the past few weeks. If someone else used a recipe and it turned out well, I feel way more confident about trying it. With all that said, I don't typically follow recipes to the T, but that is another story for another posting.

Before I give you the recipe that this post is really about, let me just prove myself wrong on a couple accounts. First of all, I found this recipe in my large accordion file of recipe clippings from magazines (most likely from Southern Living). It did not have any user comments, and I did not search for similar recipes on the internet. I would have, but I didn't have enough time. I had friends from our church community group coming over in one hour, and I wanted something sweet to serve. Secondly, I followed the recipe (well...mostly. See below). This recipe involves baking, and I don't usually experiment with baking ingredients because I don't fully understand all the chemistry behind the magic that happens in the oven, despite my addiction to the show Good Eats.

The recipe I'm about to share is a cookie recipe. I never would have thought my first food post would be about cookies. I usually shy away from cookies when baking (I don't, however, shy away from cookies when they are on a plate in front of me) because I seem to think that they are going to take more time than making some kind of bar cookies, brownies, or easy cake that you don't have to drop by rounded tablespoon one by one. This recipe proved me wrong, as the whole dropping process can be done more quickly than I remembered, and there is no cutting to be done after they cool!

So, these cookies that have taken me this long to get to are called "Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies." If the word "flourless" doesn't make you a little suspicious that these actually turn out, how about I tell you that they are also butterless. Now, I don't want you to get the impression that these are health food cookies...but they seem to be a little more healthy to me than your average flour-butter-sugar cookie. Only 6 ingredients are needed, and you probably have all of them in your kitchen already. That is precisely why I picked this recipe from my file. I had everything on hand, and they seemed quick to prepare. I did not have time to weigh the pros and cons of this recipe over another, so I hastily and uncharacteristically jumped right in to the mixing.

Here are the ingredients:

brown sugar, chunky peanut butter, egg, baking soda, vanilla extract, and chocolate chips.
That's all!

I wasn't too confident about the outcome, so I was truly surprised when these cookies came out exactly how I would want a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie to be! This is from a girl who goes through a jar of peanut butter each week and consumes enough dark chocolate to fulfill the antioxidant needs for everyone on my block. The cookies turn out slightly crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. And they aren't too sweet, which I really love about them. (Take note that they might be more sweet if you don't use natural peanut butter). Everyone loved these cookies, and no one could tell they were flourless!

Ok, enough rambling. Here is the recipe. Make these cookies! You won't be disappointed. They will definitely be seen around my house again.

Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup chunky peanut butter (I used Smucker's natural chunky. Smooth would probably be fine too)
1 large egg
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate morsels (the original recipe called for milk chocolate, so you can use whichever you prefer)

1. Stir together first 5 ingredients in a medium bowl, using a wooden spoon. Stir in chocolate morsels

2. Drop cookie dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet (I used a silpat). (Next time I might press the dough down slightly to get a flatter cookie)

3. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes or until puffed and golden. Cool cookies on baking sheet 5 minutes. Remove to a wire rack.

makes approximately 1 1/2 to 2 dozen

Mama's Boy

Brandon is unashamedly a Mama's Boy. He loves his mama! He even says "mama" when he cries. (OK, so maybe he doesn't really associate the word with me yet, but it still causes me to go pick him up more quickly, so I think he's at least caught on to that.)

Here is a video that Krzysztof wanted to capture, as it never ceases to entertain him. It's a little game we call "Where's Mommy?". Krzysztof is usually the one to change Brandon in the morning. I go in there while he's finishing up and sit in the rocking chair to get ready to feed him. Once I come in the room, all Brandon wants to do is look at me and smile. I'm not sure if he is really happy to see me or just hungry, but I'd like to think it's the former! Krzysztof will try to block Brandon's view of me, which causes Brandon to lean to either side to try to find me. It's really cute and never seems to get old. We play it just about every day.

Krzysztof comments all the time that it must be great to feel so loved. It is! It's not that he doesn't love his Daddy, though. Whenever I am holding Brandon, he's always looking around for his Daddy the same way he does with me, but I think I get the best smiles. What can I say? He is with me all day, so we get lots of practice smiling at each other.

And Brandon even looks like me. Check out these pictures. I am first and then Brandon.

Yes, I just put this picture of me on the internet.

This was so hard to stage. Brandon does not like to sit still for one second, especially on his belly. He likes to be rolling around or doing his army crawl, which is precisely what he was doing for the other 15 pictures I attempted to take. This is the ONLY one that came out even remotely well. The massager was again used as bait as it was in his crawling video.

I'm not sure what was happening here? That hand belongs to my grandmother, who was possibly checking me for a fever? Who knows.

This picture was equally difficult to capture as Brandon kept wanting to crawl towards me.

This is my other grandmother (the hand in the above picture does not belong to her).

So what do you all think? Is he a mama's boy?

8 Months and On the Move

Our little monkey turned 8 months on Sunday! Here is a video of how he gets around! Just today he started doing his army crawl all the way across the room to reach me. He'll crawl up to me and pull on my pants until I pick him up. It's pretty cute, but it was also nice when he stayed where I put him. :-)

First time playing outside

This past weekend it was finally warm enough to spend some time outside! We had blue skies and temperatures around 60. We took several walks with Brandon in his great Bob Revolution stroller.

Did Brandon shrink? No, despite his current skinniness, this picture was taken in November when we got the Bob. We just haven't been able to really use it since because it's been so cold.

Here's our almost-8-month-old boy! This was at the playground in our subdivision. He loves the swing!

These next pictures were taken on the playset in our back yard.

And here is Brandon with his Mimi. This was taken last month when she was here. I just thought it deserved a place on the blog!

Messy Food and a Talent

Here's what's new in the food world for Brandon! Brandon has been steadily increasing his food repertoire. He doesn't seem to love to eat (didn't get that from his mama), but he tolerates it enough to get in a few solid foods every day. He is now eating 5 fruits (bananas, pears, prunes, applesauce, avocado) 6 vegetables (butternut squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, asparagus, broccoli), 3 grains (rice cereal, oatmeal, mixed grains cereal) and 1 dairy (yogurt).

A face only a mother could love, right? This picture and the below video are of Brandon making more of a mess than usual. After taking a big bite, he tends to take the back of his hand and rub the food all over his face and eyes. Here he was eating a mixture of sweet potatoes and avocado. Sounds good, huh? Brandon LOVES sweet potatoes. He sometimes likes avocado and sometimes doesn't, so I usually try to mix it with something he loves to make sure he eats it. The day I took this picture and video Brandon was not too interested in eating in general, but whenever I started taking a video of him, he would eat a few more bites. I guess he's already learning to show off for the camera!

This next video shows Brandon's super talent at blowing bubbles with a straw. I started working on straw drinking with him about a month ago - not because 6 months it is the age when kids should be drinking from straws, but more because I've worked on straw drinking with several therapy clients over the years, and I wondered how young I could get a baby to use one. It took a couple weeks, but he was able to drink from it! His sucking pattern wasn't too consistent, though. He would sometimes blow and then would suck in really hard and get a big mouthful of water. Just recently he started getting more control of blowing and now all he wants to do is blow bubbles with the straw.



I love this next picture! This was his face the first time he tried broccoli. He just does not love foods that are green. He'll even refuse them by sight now. I have to mix them with something orange in order to get his greens in!

That's not a great image to leave you with, I know. We took some really great pictures of him yesterday outside, so I'll post those soon!